Bee pollen as oenological tool to carry out red winemaking in warm climate conditions

Abstract

Easily assimilated nitrogen, vitamins, fatty acids, and some minerals are some of the yeast nutrients that foster vinification processes. Additionally, some climatic, biological or cultural factors may induce variations in grape-must nutrient contents. The lack of easily assimilated nitrogen by Saccharomyces cereivisiae yeast has been proven to be the main cause of poor or inadequate alcoholic fermentation. On the other hand, the use of bee pollen during the alcoholic fermentation of white grape-musts has shown a positive effect on both the fermentation kinetics and the quality of final wines. Thus, it has been proposed as a nutrient-activator for the vinification of Tintilla de Rota grape-musts. In this study, the kinetics of the alcoholic and malolactic fermentation of grapes-musts/wines, yeast populations, and assimilable nitrogen consumption and physicochemical properties of the wines were monitored. The results showed an improvement in fermentation kinetics when bee pollen was present, in comparison to the control samples. Bee pollen is associated with an increment in easily assimilated nitrogen grape-must content. It was also been noticed that lower pollen doses (0.1 and 0.25 g/L) did not alter the physicochemical and color parameters of the grape-musts and the final wines. All of these facts suggest that bee pollen could be used as a beneficial activator-nutrient for some of the processes involved in the production of red wines.